For forming a “terrorist group” that killed two people, including a policeman, a Bahraini court has sentenced a Shiite citizen to death and jailed 22 others for life. This is the second of such ruling this week in the tiny Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom, where members of the Shiite population have led an uprising.
The court, in its ruling on Thursday, also revoked the citizenships of the 23 convicts and fined two of them 200,000 dinars ($530,000/480,000 euros), terror crime prosecution chief Ahmed al-Hammadi said in a statement.
Judicial sources said that all the defendants were Shiite.
16 were tried in absentia. Hammadi said members of the group were convicted of carrying out bombings in two Shiite villages last December. One of the bombings, in Damistan village, killed a Jordanian policeman working in Bahrain under a security and training exchange agreement.
The other one in the nearby village of Karzakan, killing an elderly Bahraini man. Both bombings were carried out by the same “terrorist group” formed by the defendants and “specialised in making explosives to target policemen,” Hammadi said. Meanwhile, an appeals court upheld the death sentence Thursday against a Shiite convicted of forming and leading a similar “terrorist group” that killed a policeman in a bombing in the Shiite village of Aker last year, Hammadi said.
The court also confirmed stiff jail sentences handed down in April to 11 other members of the group. Seven of them have been sentenced to life, and four others to 10 years, said Hammadi in a statement. The appeals court also approved revoking the citizenship of all the defendants convicted of attempting to kill three other policemen.
– These guys who call themselves Shiite should just allow peace to reign in this new year. Please!